


Graceless hearts

by pr_scatterbrain



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: Modern Magic, Multi, Russian Knitting Circle, The Librarian AU, magical and sentient Moscow
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-01
Updated: 2016-01-01
Packaged: 2018-05-10 21:27:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,525
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5601709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pr_scatterbrain/pseuds/pr_scatterbrain
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Almost everywhere the eye falls in Moscow, there is something bright and shiny and new.</p><p>No one looks at Evgeni when he jimmy's open the lock of the abandoned building. </p><p>Many years ago, it was a library. Now it’s abandoned. Many old buildings are. They hide in the spaces and shadows the eye slides over. Hidden. Rusting. Waiting. (The Librarian(s) au)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Graceless hearts

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Vitula](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vitula/gifts).



> To Vitula - I hope you enjoy this <3

 

 

 

 

Evgeni finds it.  He finds it and tells Alex and Sasha.

Even much later, Evgeni doesn't know why he shows it to them. 

 

 

Many years ago, it was a library. Now it’s abandoned. Many old buildings are. Throughout Russia they hide in the spaces and shadows the eye slides over. Hidden. Rusting. Waiting. Decaying. Evgeni read somewhere that Russia is the only developed country in the world where there are less kilometres of road each year, instead of more. He isn’t sure if it’s true or not. It’s hard to know, he thinks.

“You think too much,” Sasha says his tone flippantly sharp.

Evgeni shrugs. He doesn’t know if that’s true or not either.

He moved to Moscow a few years back. There are times where he still feels like his home is a town, rather than a city.

Sasha came from a much smaller town than Magnitogorsk. He doesn’t act like it though. Evgeni would never have known if Alex hadn’t told him, hadn’t spilled it like it wasn’t a secret while he laughed and laughed at both of them.

Alex knows everybody. He knows everything too.

What people know about Alex is limited to what he wants them to know. A recent graduate from Russian State University of Physical Education, Alex is glorious and golden with such a bright mind. With a PhD, a good name and a position waiting for him at RGUFK, most people like what they see. Hardly anyone knows he is a thief. Secrets, loose change in the glovebox of cars, hearts, borrowed t-shirts he never gets around to returning.

Evgeni has lost count.

Evgeni has lost many things to Alex’s clever fingers and easy smiles.

 

 

(Evgeni doesn’t have any of Alex’s polish or peer reviewed esteem. He did however find a research hole in his dissertation.)

 

 

Almost everywhere the eye falls in Moscow, there is something bright and shiny and new.

No one looks at them jimmy open the lock of the library.

It was abandoned a long time ago. But no one wants to talk about that.

It must have been beautiful once. Maybe not beautiful the way some buildings in Moscow are beautiful. It isn’t a relic from the time of Emperors and Empresses. It isn’t a gilded place of learning or worship. The building is stripped of ornament. That is familiar. Moscow might be made of bright things, but the three of them grew up seeing harder things. Brutalist architecture cut into their skylines, and left long shadows. The library was probably built then, but Evgeni isn’t sure. The more he looks at it, the more the lines of it soften and curve just a little. The regimented columns which break up the echoing space lead his eye to the ever so slightly vaulted ceiling.

When it’s sunny, light fights its way inside; past the dirty windows and spilling across the mess of books which are scattered everywhere.   

There used to be people who took care of these kinds of places. Now there is only them; Sasha with his hands stuffed deep into the pockets of his leather jacket, Alex veering off into the depths of the building to explore and Evgeni who exhales slowly.

Sometimes Evgeni stays late picking books up and stacking them in tall towers up against the wall. There is something methodical about stacking the books. He likes the routine of it. Likes how quickly time seems to pass.  He can spend hours doing it.

It doesn’t make any difference really.

“Like organising deck chairs on the Hindenburg,” Sasha says to Alex, because he is cruel, even to his friends. 

Sasha steps on the books. Walks across them, just to see the look on Evgeni's face (even though most of the time Sasha doesn't look at Evgeni to see it). The library is three foot or more deep in books thrown from their shelves. There aren’t many shelves. The ones that are left are made of dark hardwood. There are no mysteries why so few of them survived. Most probably ended up as firewood. Or maybe just somewhere being more useful. Maybe they’re straining under the weight of the endless reports Alex’s mother writes from within her government department.

(The past in Russia isn’t that far in the past. Not really).

 

 

Alex spends his nights out on the town in Moscow, drinking and smoking and flirting and sometimes he goes on week long benders. The truth about him is that he can't stand to be alone. Can't stand the silence, yet somehow he always finds himself back at the library. 

Sometimes he sits against Evgeni's endless stacks of books, his spine pressing against the spines of the books, and reads the texts on his phone but doesn't answer any of them. 

Alex finds everything and everyone.

No one can find him though.

 

 

Three people can’t keep a secret, especially not one they don’t particularly consider to be a secret.

In a short space of time the lost library gains a spate of new patrons.

Sergei Gonchar – Gonch – stops by on his way to work in the morning. He brings Evgeni a thermos of hot tea and takes with him a leather bound book that looks interesting. He returns it promptly at the end of the week. In its place, Sergei takes Evgeni home with him, because it’s been too long since he and Ksenia had Evgeni over for dinner and the girls missed him.

Ilya Bryzgalov comes by the library sometimes, and borrows random books. Obsessed with space, he likes books about astronauts and dreamers throughout the ages, but he doesn’t search them out. Not especially. It seems like he always finds exactly what he’s looking for in the first few books he picks up.

“It’s a talent,” he tells Alex.

Alex knows a thing or two about talents and a thing or two about Ilya.

Ilya knows a thing or two about everything. Once or twice a week, he sides up to Alex in random clubs, and strikes up conversations about some fascinating thing he read that day and then bounces off to talk to girls and annoy various DJs. 

No one quite knows what to make of him. Pasha - Pavel Datsyuk - says that Ilya isn’t too bad. Or isn’t that bad. One of the two.

That isn’t saying much given how he puts up with Evgeni. For as long as any of them can remember, Evgeni has followed Pasha around, wide eyed and awestruck. Evgeni knows he does, but doesn’t really care. For as long as Evgeni has known Pasha, he had looked up to him. There is something so calm and capable about him. He knows who he is, and when Evgeni is around Pasha, he feels a little bit like the person Pasha thinks is; someone who isn’t stupid for being so kind, someone who is brave for following his heart.

Alex may tease, but Evgeni thinks he is lucky to have a friend like Pasha. Not everyone does.

Pasha thinks the library is a good idea.

“You need purpose,” he tells them.

Sasha gives him a look. “We need a lot of things.”

Pasha does not react.

Instead, he shakes his head fondly. “Perhaps you are right.”

 

 

Pasha has a generous heart. Evgeni says as much when it is just the two of them.

“I don’t know how he can stand it,” Sasha says.

Evgeni doesn’t know how Sasha can stand it either.

“I’m not brave like him,” Sasha admits, his eyes focused firmly on the pavement as they walk towards the closest metro station.

Evgeni throws an arm around Sasha’s shoulder and brings him close. He can be brave for Sasha.

 

 

No one wants to say the obvious, but no one says anything now. Fast cars, loud music and Alex grinning as flirts with everyone in the room before he takes Evgeni home with him. That is how things are.

“You need to be careful,” Sasha tells Alex, because he should.

Evgeni and Alex don’t do anything in half measures.

Sasha knew that about them before they knew each other. Maybe he should have said anything. He isn’t sure if that would have made a difference.

Alex loves Evgeni’s dark eyes and earnest smiles. Evgeni loves Alex’s clever jokes and his awful ones too. The two of them fell for each other so hard and so fast. All it took was a few days and Evgeni followed Alex back to Moscow. Back to his apartment.

They don’t know restraint or moderation. Sometimes it hurts Sasha’s eyes to look at them.

(Sasha is afraid it will hurt more later).

The truth is Sasha isn't cruel. It's what he knows, but it isn’t him. It's just what protects him. He hates it a little that Alex sees through it. Evgeni too, Sasha suspects. However Evgeni is kind. He’s probably too kind to say anything. Alex might though. Sasha knows Alex sees right through him and his defences.

 

 

Evgeni has a girlfriend. Or an ex-girlfriend. That’s about it.

He doesn’t like to think about it. He still likes to talk to her though. Oksana likes to talk to him too. They adore each other in a way that Sasha doesn’t quite understand. Sometimes he overhears Evgeni’s side of their phone calls and there is always such happiness in his voice.

 

 

Maybe thief isn’t the right word for Alex. He’s rich and talented enough that his actions could be understood as something different. Charming maybe.

Easily forgiven and loved, Alex is golden in every way.

It didn’t really surprise Sasha that Evgeni followed Alex to Moscow. Sasha did the same.

 

 

 

One day Evgeni goes to the library and finds someone else there.

“Sidney,” he introduced himself as.

Sidney has kind eyes and can’t speak much Russian beyond ‘hello’ and ‘my name is Sidney.’

His pronunciation isn’t quite right, but standing in a patch of sunlight, Sidney is very beautiful. Evgeni knows that should be the wrong word, but it isn’t. Not with how the morning light catches his cheekbones and the way he bites his lip as he fishes a paperback book out of his pocket. English to Russian and Russian to English. The cover is water stained and battered. It looks like it got left in the rain and then shoved in someone’s pocket. Flipping through the pages, Sidney looks for words.

Evgeni’s English isn’t great, but it’s good enough to start a conversation with him.

The conversation is patchy in parts but it threads between them and keeps going. It takes them from the library to a warm café for lunch.

Sidney has huge eyes.

Far too busy taking in the sights, he hardly looks where he is going. Evgeni maybe takes advantage of that and walks the long way through Moscow to his favourite café. Evgeni isn’t quite a local yet, and he hasn’t travelled like Alex has, but he doesn’t think it’s a stretch for him to proclaim Moscow’s beauty. Sidney nods.

“I didn’t think it would be like this,” he says.

Evgeni doesn’t quite understand what he said, but he hears the awe in his voice and understands what he means.

Over lunch, Evgeni finds out Sidney is from a small town too and that this is his first time in Russia, but not his first time visiting another country. Together, they manage somewhat fractured conversations. Sidney knows bits and pieces of Russian. It’s a little bit old fashion, but then his phrase book is easily a few decades old. He can’t read a menu and his pronunciation is stilted, but he can order a meal. He also manages to understand Evgeni and make sense of his attempts at English. It doesn’t take them too long to find a rhythm with each other.

“Where else have you been?” Evgeni asks.

Sidney pauses between bites of his sandwich. “Italy and France.”

Evgeni has read about both.

Sidney shrugs when Evgeni asks him what he thought about them. “I was there at the wrong time.”

Evgeni nods. The middle of winter isn’t exactly high season in Europe.

“I spent a little time in Netherlands too,” Sidney adds after a beat.

“And Moscow,” Evgeni adds.

Sidney smiles a little. “I didn’t think I would see Moscow.”

“You like?”

Sidney smiles and nods. “I like Moscow a lot.”

“The best?” Evgeni asks, because he cannot help himself.

Sidney’s smile shifts a little, but only a little. “Yeah. By far.”

 

 

Lunch turns into a meandering city tour that takes up most of the afternoon and spills over into the early evening. To be honest Evgeni isn’t the best guide. He is still learning the city himself. However Moscow is a city that rewards people who want to learn it. There are parts of the city which unfold for him, and parts which gently show him the way. He takes Sidney to his favourite parts and he lets them discover new places and sites along the way.

Sidney takes joy in everything; the glittery new and the stately old.

Everything seems to catch his eye.

They look at the sleek and very beautiful sports cars in the Ferrari dealership and leave their fingerprints on the glass. Together they follow the shadows stretching out across the pavement and find themselves in some of the medieval thoroughfares. Evgeni watches Sidney’s eyes light up in astonishment when they slip down to the metro. The station Evgeni shows Sidney is his favourite, and Sidney smiles so brightly at Evgeni when they step onto their train.

Evgeni smiles back at him; easy as breathing.

 

 

Sidney tucks himself close to Evgeni’s side when they go out for drinks.

Evgeni feels his heart do things inside his chest.

 

 

Under the club lights, Sidney’s skin becomes luminous. However he looks a little overwhelmed by everything, or maybe by Alex who introduces himself before Evgeni gets the chance to even open his mouth.

Evgeni finds that happening a lot that night.

Unlike Evgeni, Alex speaks English almost fluently. Despite the way Evgeni and Sidney found round-about ways to communicate during the day, in the club Evgeni isn’t quick enough to get a word in edgewise. Not with the way Alex is talking and the way Sidney is rolling his eyes.

Later, when Alex and Evgeni are buying the next round of drinks, Evgeni wants to be upset.

He is upset, he realises. It’s a petulant feeling, tinged with a confusing mix of anger and envy. Of course Alex notices.

“I like him,” Alex tells Evgeni simply.

Evgeni doesn’t say anything.

Alex leans close, his body warm and his smile soft. “I like you.”

 

 

(Alex loves Evgeni. He couldn’t not love Evgeni.)  

 

 

“How long are you staying here for?” Evgeni asks at the end of the night when he and Alex are leaving.

Sidney looks confused. “I’m not staying. I’m visiting.”

Evgeni doesn’t understand. It’s only later when he and Alex have put Sidney in a taxi and are waiting for another to take them back to Alex’s place, Evgeni realises he forgot to exchange mobile numbers with Sidney. Tipsy and tried, Evgeni’s heart drops and he can’t help looking in the direction Sidney’s taxi went.

“Don’t worry,” Alex says when Evgeni tells him. “We’re meeting with him tomorrow.” 

 

 

Tomorrow turns into Alex showing Sidney the dusty marble statues he found in one of the reading rooms of the library. Evgeni didn’t know there were statues or reading rooms.

Sidney is examining the stained face of Athena when Evgeni finds them.

Evgeni doesn’t have anything to show off to Sidney. Stacks of book aren’t really that impressive compared to, well, the treasures Alex has found.

Evgeni hates feeling envious. He really does. It consumes him in a way that he would hate anyone seeing. Maybe it distracts him too, because he is taken off guard when Alex asks if he would want to ask Sidney to come home with them.

“I like him, and you like him,” Alex says, his blue eyes dark. “We should like him together.”

And oh.

Oh.

Evgeni didn’t even know that was a possibility.

Alex grins and presses a kiss to the corner of Evgeni’s mouth. It’s quick and over before Evgeni has a chance to even register it happening. It’s a tease and a promise – if Evgeni wants it to be.

Evgeni wants a lot of things.

 

 

(Evgeni isn’t used to being able to have what he wants.)

 

 

Evgeni kisses Sidney. He can be patient, but he doesn’t want to be. Not this time.

And Sidney kisses him back.

 

 

Sidney kisses Alex too, when he follows them home. Evgeni and Alex grin and laugh and they notice Sidney’s nerves and the unpractised way he kisses them back. He swears in an awful mix of English and Russia and maybe some French when Alex drops to his knees. It’s crude and unexpected and it makes both Alex and Evgeni laugh.

“Who taught you that?” Alex asks, delighted. “You sound like my grandmother.”

Alex’s Grandmother terrifies Evgeni. She was a machine gunner in the Second World War and is fiercely proud of her grandchildren. (She does however, unabashedly adore Sasha).

Hair askew and blushing, Sidney tells them to fuck off, and of course as he does, Alex choses to press his advantage and mouth the cotton of Sidney’s boxers. Evgeni’s breath catches in his throat and Sidney trembles in his arms.

“I want to,” Sidney says, when Alex pauses to check in with him.   

Alex has the hands of a thief and he is very careful with Sidney.

Compared to Alex, Evgeni is clumsy. However he has kind eyes and he makes Sidney smile and blush.

“I want you both,” Sidney says when Evgeni asks if he’s okay, if what they are doing is okay.

They want him.

 

 

(Sometimes that’s all anyone really needs.)

 

 

There are days when Sasha has the library to himself. There aren’t many of those days. Not anymore. Lately they seem to be dwindling as more and more people find out about the library. Yet every now and then Sasha has the entire place to himself. He isn’t a big reader, but the piles of books Evgeni’s made are good boosters. They make great leverage and he uses them to jump up onto the window sills. The view isn’t great on foggy or smoggy days, but sometimes he can see pretty far. The city feels like it’s yawning and dozily waking up. It’s starting to rain more, and the dirty snow and ice has been disappearing. Spring might be on the way. Maybe. 

Outside it’s blowing a gale. Rain is splattering against the windows Pasha and Gonch helped Evgeni fix the week before last. Resting his head against the glass, Sasha makes himself inhale deeply and exhale slowly.

Sometimes there are days when he feels like his heart has stopped beating within his chest. It’s not a big deal. It’s just a thing. A thing that is his business and no one else’s. If his heart is silent inside his chest, well, that’s another thing that happened a little bit too late to be useful.

And if he scrubs his eyes with the back of his hands, well, no one is there to see anything.

By the storm has lost its fury, Sasha’s ready to leave.

Of course he trips when he jumps down. Three of Evgeni’s neat piles of books get knocked over. Sasha curses. Picking them up, he shoves them back into some kind of order. Judging by the mix of books, Evgeni hadn’t gotten around to implementing the dewy decimal system yet. It’s probably just a matter of time. Though for now, books about WWII will have to coexist with the books of myths, magic, and linguistics.

 

 

Evgeni doesn’t know how Sidney found the library.

“Maybe he found you,” Sasha says.

 

 

Someone found Sasha once. He wasn’t a thief like Alex, but he does have Sasha’s heart. Though to be fair, Sasha gave it to him.  

(Sasha misses him more than his heart).

 

 

Sasha lives within walking distance from the library in an old apartment building that is ugly in a way that doesn’t soften the more he looks at it. However he’s never needed things to be beautiful. Not everything is. For a few months Sergei Bobrovsky has been living on his couch. For some reason Sergei prefers to be called Bob. Apparently he’s a teacher. He also knows the location of three defunct metro stations. Last week he finally showed Sasha the third. It had murals of Akhal-Tekes racing through forests and deserts. By the time Sasha had followed them from start to finish, he hadn’t felt quite as homesick as he had when he woke up that morning.

Bob started paying half of the rent a little while ago. Sasha supposes that means they are roommates now.

He's also in love with their neighbour, Olya, who seems to like him a little.

On Thursday nights they do laundry together and sometimes Bob reads to her while she is sorting the colours from the whites. They like poetry, and stories with mysteries. Sometimes Bob shares letters that his Canadian pen pal Nick wrote him. Nick is a born story teller, and Olya always looks forward to his next letter.

They insist on going to the library when they find out what Sasha has been doing with his spare time.

They disappear the moment Sasha opens the door. All Sasha hears is the faint sound of Olya giggling and Bob’s voice as he tells her that she has to look at something. Rolling his eyes, Sasha closes the door tightly behind them.

It’s raining again today. It’s been raining all week. It feels like the streets will be washed clear by the time it stops.  The weather is affecting the wooden door and doorframe. Sasha has to use his body to jam the door shut. It’s difficult, especially since Evgeni’s piles of books are everywhere. Annoyed, Sasha gives in and starts moving them away from the entrance. He knows Evgeni would be annoyed if they got damaged by someone ramming the door open onto them.

The moment he tries to shift them, the stacks topple.

It probably serves him right. This place is Alex and Evgeni’s folly, not him.

With books and folios scattered all over the recently cleared floor, the sight makes Sasha sigh. It’s like the place hates him. Every time he touches something, something goes wrong. He’s probably going to end up buried under one of Evgeni’s increasingly precariously stacks of books.  

Grabbing an armful of random tomes, he shifts them from the marble floor to the window sill. There; good enough.

It feels like the librarians who used to work here were obsessed with military history. All Sasha seems to see is books about WWII. Cracking open one, Sasha’s nose wrinkles at the musty smell. Glancing at the borrowing card is illuminating. The last person who borrowed it checked the book out in 1955. They were one of a handful of people that read it. Sasha’s probably the first person to open its cover since then.

On a whim, Sasha flips through it.

He stops when he sees a black and white image of the frontlines.

 

 

 

In the morning Evgeni wakes up late. Curled between Alex and Sidney, Evgeni feels very safe and he could probably go back to sleep only Sidney’s eyes are very bright. For a second Evgeni thinks Sidney is on the verge of tears, except then he smiles and seems to glow with joy. Evgeni can’t help but kiss him. He only stops when Alex bites his shoulder – hard. It’s something which makes Evgeni yelp and Sidney laugh. This was probably Alex’s goal.  

“I have something to show you,” Sidney tells them when he stops laughing. "All of you." 

“Yeah?” Alex asks.

"Can you show us first?" Evgeni asks.

Sidney nods.  

His takes their hand and after breakfast and a short metro trip, he leads them deeper and deeper into the library. They go through the reading rooms and the stale smelling galleries and through the map room. Room after room. Doorway after doorway.  Further than even Alex has explored. Further than anyone has been in years and years and years.

“Where are we going?” Alex asks.

Evgeni doesn’t need to ask. He knows his heart. It is beating steady and sure and this isn’t the first time he has followed it.

 

 

Sasha is being irrational. He knows he is. As he is knocking on Pasha’s door, he knows he is going to be wasting both of their time with this. The book can’t be right. It just can’t.

“Hey Sema,” Pasha says in greeting.

Opening the book to the page with the corner he folded over, Sasha wordlessly hands it over to him.  

Pasha touches the faded black and white pictures.

“Maybe you were right,” he tells Sasha, which doesn’t make Sasha feel any less confused.

 

 

No one else understands when they bring the book to them. Ilya, Bob and Olya just talk nonsense about mysteries and magic and myths, while Ksenia tries to talk over them and Gonch tries to actually look at the photograph without someone grabbing it from his hands for a second look. It’s chaotic.  

Sasha doesn’t blame any of them for being confused. Not when he is too.  

“Where are Zhenya and Alex?” Sasha asks, because they should see this too.

Gonch looks up from the book. “With Sidney.”

Sasha exhales.

Pasha takes the book back and closes it. “Where were they going?”

Gonch doesn’t need to say a word. Sasha already knows where they are.  

In Moscow the streets feel like arteries and blood veins. Old, yet so full of life, they hum beneath their feet and reach out all around them and beyond the city’s official borders. Underground the trains run perfectly on time and seem to be waiting for them when they change from one onto another. It is nearing noon when they reach the library.

The rain has stopped. The sky is cloudy, but patches of sunlight poke through.

The library’s windows are clean and the litter in the gutter has all been washed away. Sasha’s stomach aches and he isn’t quite sure what to do now they are here.

The door is unlocked and opens easily for them. Inside everything is bright and the marble floor softly gleams. It’s only been a few weeks since Evgeni found it on his walk home from Sasha’s place. When they find Evgeni and Alex, they are in the gallery. Evgeni is sitting underneath a rather good copy of a neoclassical painting, while Alex is idly polishing a rusted brass nameplate. They look perhaps a touch overwhelmed by the sight of Sidney rehanging some of the paintings that Ksenia found in one of the former cloakrooms.  

Sasha finds his voice. “Who are you?”

Sidney puts down the painting he was in the middle of hanging, but it is Evgeni who answers.

“He’s our Guardian,” he says simply.

“Guardian?” Sasha asks.

“We’re Librarian’s,” Alex says.

 

 

Sometimes people find places.

And sometimes places find people.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> The title is taken from _Shake It Out_ by Florence + The Machine.
> 
> Find/follow me on [tumblr](http://www.pr-scatterbrain.tumblr.com) if you want <3


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